Elucidations.

I.

In his third book, Clement exposes
the Basilidians and others who perverted the rule of our Lord, which
permissively, but not as of obligation, called some to the self-regimen
of a single life, on condition of their possessing the singular gift
requisite to the same. True continence, he argues, implies the command
of the tongue, and all manner of concupiscence, such as greed of wealth,
or luxury in using it. If, by a divine faculty and gift of grace, it
enables us to practice temperance, very well; but more is necessary. As to
marriage, he states what seems to him to be the truth. We honour celibate
chastity, and esteem them blest to whom this is God’s gift. We
403also admire a single marriage, and
the dignity which pertains to one marriage only; admitting, nevertheless,
that we ought to compassionate others, and to bear one another’s
burdens, lest any one, when he thinks he stands, should himself also
fall. The apostle enjoins, with respect to a second marriage, “If
thou art tempted by concupiscence, resort to a lawful wedlock.”

Our author then proceeds to a castigation of
Carpocrates, and his son Epiphanes, an Alexandrian on his father’s
side, who, though he lived but seventeen years, his mother being a
Cephallenian, received divine honours at Sama, where a magnificent
temple, with altars and shrines, was erected to him; the Cephallenians
celebrating his apotheosis, by a new-moon festival, with sacrifices,
libations and hymns, and convivialities. This youth acquired, from
his father, a knowledge of Plato’s philosophy and of the circle
of the sciences. He was the author of the jargon about monads,26752675 See vol. i. p. 332, note 4,
this series. of which see Irenæus; and from him comes the
heresy of those subsequently known as Carpocratians. He left a book, De
Justitia, in which he contends for what he represents as Plato’s
idea of a community of women in sexual relations. Justly does our author
reckon him a destroyer alike of law and Gospel, unworthy even of being
classed with decent heretics; and he attributes to his followers all those
abominations which had been charged upon the Christians. This illustrates
the terrible necessity, which then existed, of drawing a flaming line of
demarcation between the Church, and the wolves in sheeps’ clothing,
who thus dishonoured the name of Christ, by associating such works of the
devil with the adoption of a nominal discipleship. It should be mentioned
that Mosheim questions the story of Epiphanes. (See his Hist. of the
First Three Centuries, vol. i. p. 448.)

II.

The early disappearance of the
Christian agapæ may probably be attributed to the terrible
abuse of the word here referred to, by the licentious Carpocratians. The
genuine agapæ were of apostolic origin (2 Pet. ii. 13; Jude
12), but were often abused by hypocrites, even under the apostolic eye
(1 Corinthians 11:21). In the Gallican Church, a survival or relic
of these feasts of charity is seen in the pain béni;
and, in the Greek churches. in the ἀντίδωρον
or eulogiæ distributed to non-communicants at the close
of the Eucharist, from the loaf out of which the bread of oblation is
supposed to have been cut.

III.

Next, he treats of the Marcionites,
who rejected marriage on the ground that the material creation is
in itself evil. Promising elsewhere to deal with this general false
principle, he refutes Marcion, and with him the Greeks who have condemned
the generative law of nature, specifying Heraclitus, Empedocles,
the Sibyl, Homer, and others; but he defends Plato against Marcion,
who represents him as teaching the depravity of matter. He proceeds
to what the dramatists have exhibited of human misery. He shows the
error of those who represent the Pythagoreans as on that account denying
themselves the intimacies of conjugal society; for he says they practiced
this restraint, only after having given themselves a family. He explains
the prohibition of the bean, by Pythagoras, on the very ground, that
it occasioned sterility in women according to Theophrastus. Clement
expounds the true meaning of Christ’s words, perverted by those
who abstained from marriage not in honour of encraty, but as an insane
impeachment of the divine wisdom in the material creation.

IV.

He refutes the Carpocratians, also,
in their slanders against the deacon Nicolas, showing that the Nicolaitans
had abused his name and words. Likewise, concerning Matthias, he exposes a
similar abuse. He castigates one who seduced a maiden into impurity by an
absurd perversion of Scripture, and thoroughly exposes this blasphemous
abuse of the apostolic text. He subjoins another refutation of one of
those heretics, and allows that some might adopt the opinion of his
dupes, if, as the Valentinians would profess, only spiritual communion
were concerned.

Seeing, however, that these heretics, and the
followers of Prodicus, who wrongfully call themselves gnostics,
claimed a practical indulgence in all manner of disgusting profligacies,
he convicts them by arguments derived from right reason and from the
Scriptures, and by human laws as well. Further, he exposes the folly
of those who pretended that the less honourable parts of man are not
the work of the Creator, and overwhelms their presumption by abundant
argument, exploding, at the same time, their corruptions of the sacred
text of the Scriptures.

V.

To relieve himself of
a more particular struggle with each individual heresy,
he proceeds to reduce them under two heads: (1) Those who
teach a reckless mode of life (ἀδιαφόρως
ζῆν), and (2) those who impiously affect
continence. To the first, he opposes the plain propriety and duty
of a decorous way of living continently; showing, that as it cannot
be denied that there are certain abominable and filthy lusts, which,
as such, must be shunned, therefore there is no such thing as living
“indifferently” with respect to them. He who lives to the
flesh, moreover, is condemned; nor can the likeness and image of God
be regained, or eternal life be ensured, save by a strict observance of
divine precepts. Further, our author shows that true Christian liberty
consists, not, as they vociferate, in self-indulgence, but, on the
contrary, is founded in an entire freedom from perturbations of mind
and passion, and from all filthy lusts.

VI.

As to the second class of heretics,
he reproves the contemners of God’s ordinance, who boast of
a false continence, and scorn holy matrimony and the creation of a
family. He contends with them by the authority of St. John, and first
answers objections of theirs, based on certain apocryphal sayings of
Christ to Salome; next, somewhat obscurely, he answers their notions
of laws about marriage imposed in the Old Law, and, as they pretend,
abrogated in the New; thirdly, he rebukes their perpetual clatter about
the uncleanness of conjugal relations; and, fourth, he pulverizes their
arguments derived from the fact, that the children of the resurrection
“neither marry, nor are given in marriage.”

Then he gives his attention to another class of
heretics boasting that they followed the example of Christ, and presuming
to teach that marriage is of the devil. He expounds the exceptional
celibacy of the Messiah, by the two natures of the Godman, which need
nothing but a reverent statement to expose the fallacy of arguing from
His example in this particular, seeing He, alone, of all the sons of men,
is thus supreme over all considerations of human nature, pure and simple,
as it exists in the sons of Adam. Moreover, He espoused the Church,
which is His
405wife. Clement expounds very wisely
those sayings of our Lord which put honour upon voluntary celibacy,
where the gift has been imparted, for His better service.

And here let it be noted, how continually the
heresies of these times seem to turn on this matter of the sexes. It
is impossible to cleanse a dirty house, without raising a dust and
a bad smell; and heathenism, which had made lust into a religion,
and the worship of its gods a school of gross vice, penetrating all
classes of society, could not be exorcised, and give place to faith,
hope and charity, without this process of conflict, in which Clement
distinguishes himself. At the same time, the wisdom of our Lord’s
precepts and counsels are manifest, in this history. Alike He taught the
sanctity and blessedness of marriage and maternity, and the exceptional
blessedness of the celibate when received as a gift of God, for a peculiar
ministry. Thus heathen morals were rebuked and castigated, womanhood
was lifted to a sphere of unwonted honour, and the home was created and
sanctified in the purity and chastity of the Christian wife; while yet a
celibate chastity was recognised as having a high place in the Christian
system. The Lord prescribes to all, whether married or unmarried, a law
of discipline and evangelical encraty. The Christian homes of England and
America may be pointed out, thank God, as illustrating the divine wisdom;
while the degraded monasteries of Italy and Spain and South America,
with the horrible history of enforced celibacy in the Latin priesthood,
are proofs of the unwisdom of those who imported into the Western churches
the very heresies and abortive argumentations which Clement disdains,
while he pulverizes them and blows them away, thoroughly purging his
floor, and burning up this chaff.

VII.

Here it is specially important to
observe what Clement demonstrates, not only from the teachings of the
apostles, of Elijah and Samuel and the Master Himself, but, finally
and irrefragably, from the apostolic example. He names St. Peter here
as elsewhere, and notes his memorable history as a married man.26762676 See the touching story
of St. Peter’s words to his wife as she was led to martyrdom
(Stromata, book vii. p. 451, Edinburgh Edition).
He supposes St. Paul himself to have been married; and he instances
St. Philip the deacon, and his married daughters, besides giving the
right exposition of a passage which Carpocrates had shamefully distorted
from its plain significance.

VIII.

He passes to a demonstration of the
superiority of Christian continence over the sort of self-constraint
lauded by Stoics and other philosophers. God only can enable man to
practice a genuine continence, not merely contending with depraved lusts,
but eradicating them. Here follow some interesting examples drawn from
the brahmins and fakirs of India; interesting tokens, by the way, of
the assaults the Gospel had already made upon their strongholds about
the Ganges.

IX.

Briefly he explains another text,
“Sin shall not have dominion over you,” which the heretics
wrested from the purpose and intent of St. Paul. He also returns to a
passage from the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, and to the pretended
conversation of Christ with Salome, treating it, perhaps, with more
consideration than it merits.

X.

But this Gospel of the Hebrews,
and another apocryphal Gospel, that of the Egyptians, may be worthy
of a few words just here. Jones (On the Canon, vol. i. p. 206)
very learnedly maintains that Clement “never saw it,” nor
used it for any quotation of his own. And, as for a Gospel written in the
Hebrew tongue, Clement could not read Hebrew; the single citation he makes
out of it, being, probably, at second hand. Greatly to the point is the
argument of Lardner,26772677
Works, ii. 252. See, also, the apocryphal collection in this series,
hereafter. therefore, who says, as settling the question of
the value of these books, “If Clement, who lived at Alexandria,
and was so well acquainted with almost all sorts of books, had (but a
slight, or) no knowledge at all of them, how obscure must they have been;
how little regarded by Catholic Christians.”

XI.

Ingenious is Clement’s
exposition of that saying of our Lord, “Where two or three are met
together in my name,” etc. He explodes a monstrous exposition of
the text, and ingeniously applies it to the Christian family. The husband
and the wife living in chaste matrimony, and the child which God bestows,
are three in sweet society, who may claim and enjoy the promise. This
reflects great light upon the Christian home, as it rose, like a
flower, out of the “Church in the house.” Family prayers,
the graces before and after meat, the hymn “On lighting the lamps
at eventide,” and the complines, or prayers at bedtime,
are all the products of the divine contract to be with the “two
or three” who are met in His name to claim that inconceivably
precious promise. Other texts from St. Matthew are explained, in their
Catholic verity, by our venerable author.

XII.

He further expounds the Catholic
idea of marriage, and rescues, from heretical adulteration, the
precept of Moses (Ex. xix. 15); introducing a lucid parallel, with the
Apostolic command,267826782 Cor. vi. 17. Compare Ex. xxix. 45, and Lev. xxvi. 12.
“Come out from among them, and be separate,” etc. He turns the
tables on his foul antagonists; showing them that this very law obliges
the Catholic Christian to separate himself alike from the abominations of
the heathen, and from the depraved heretics who abuse the word of God, and
“wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction.” This eleventh
chapter of the third book abounds in Scriptural citations and expositions,
and is to be specially praised for asserting the purity of married life,
in connection with the inspired law concerning fasting and abstinence
(1 Cor. vii. 3–5), laid down by the reasonably ascetic St. Paul.

XIII.

The melancholy example of Tatian is
next instanced, in his departures from orthodox encraty. Against poor
Tatian’s garrulity, he proves the sanctity of marriage, alike in
the New and the Old Testaments. A curious argument he adduces against
the ceremonial washing prescribed by the
407law (Lev. xv. 18), but not against
the same as a dictate of natural instinct. He considers that particular
ceremonial law a protest against the polygamy which God tolerated, but
never authorized, under Moses; and its abrogation (i.e., by the Synod
of Jerusalem), is a testimony that there is no uncleanness, whatever,
in the chaste society of the married pair, in Christ. He rescues other
texts from the profane uses of the heretics, proving that our duty to
abstain from laying up treasures here, merely layouts the care of the
poor and needy; and that the saying, that “the children of the
kingdom neither marry nor are given in marriage,” respects only
their estate after the resurrection. So the command about “caring
for the things of God,” is harmonized with married life. But our
author dwells on the apostle’s emphatic counsels against second
marriages. It is noteworthy how deeply Clement’s orthodoxy has
rooted itself in the Greek churches, where the clergy must be once
married, but are not permitted to marry a second time.

A curious objection is met and dismissed. The
man who excused himself “because he had married a wife,”
was a great card for heretical manipulations; but no need of saying that
Clement knows how to turn this, also, upon their own hands.

XIV.

Julius Cassianus (assigned by
Lardner to a.d. 190) was
an Alexandrian Encratite, of whom, whatever his faults, Clement speaks
not without respect. He is quoted with credit in the Stromata
(book i. cap. xxi. p. 324), but comes into notice here, as having led
off the school of Docetism. But Clement does not treat him as he does
the vulgar and licentious errorist. He reproves him for his use of the
Gospel according to the Egyptians, incidentally testifying to the Catholic
recognition of only four Gospels. He refutes a Platonic idea of Cassian,
as to the pre-existence of the soul. Also, he promises a full explanation,
elsewhere, of “the coats of skins” (which Cassian seems to
have thought the flesh itself), wherewith Adam and Eve were clothed.
Lardner refers us to Beausobre for a curious discussion of this matter.
Clement refutes a false argument from Christ’s hyperbole of hatred
to wife and children and family ties, and also gives lucid explanations
of passages from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezra, which had been wrested
to heretical abuse. In a similar manner, he overthrows what errorists
had built upon Job’s saying, “who can bring a clean thing
out of the unclean;” as also their false teachings on the texts,
“In sin hath my mother conceived me,” “the fruit of
my body for the sin of my soul,” and the apostolic instance of
the athlete who is “temperate in all things.”

XV.

He proclaims the purity of
physical generation, because of the parturition of the Blessed Virgin;
castigating the docetism of Cassian, who had presumed to speak
of the body of Jesus as a phantasm, and the grosser blasphemies
of Marcion and Valentinus, equally destructive to the Christ of
the Gospel.26792679
In using the phrase ecclesia nostra (ἡ κατὰ τὴν
Ἐκκλησιαν
καθ᾽ ἡμας), which
I take to refer to the church militant, we encounter a formula which
we use differently in our day. He overturns the whims of
these latter deceivers, about Adam’s society with his wife, and
concludes that our Lord’s assumption of the flesh of His mother,
was a sufficient corroboration of that divine law by which the generations
of mankind are continued.

XVI.

From all which Clement concludes
that his two classes of heretics are alike wanderers from Catholic
orthodoxy; whether, on the one hand, under divers pretexts glorifying
an unreal continence
408against honourable marriage,
or, on the other, persuading themselves as speciously to an unlimited
indulgence of their sinful lusts and passions. Once more he quotes
the Old Testament and the New, which denounce uncleanness, but not the
conjugal relations. He argues with indignation upon those who degrade
the estate to which a bishop is called as “the husband of one
wife, ruling his own house and children well.” Then he reverts
to his idea of “the two or three,” maintaining that a holy
marriage makes the bishop’s home “a house of the Lord”
(see note 75, p. 1211, ed. Migne). And he concludes the book by
repeating his remonstrance against the claim of these heretics to be
veritable Gnostics,—a name he will by no means surrender
to the enemies of truth.

XVII.

To the interpretation I have thought
preferable, and which I ventured to enlarge, it should be added that our
author subjoins others, founded on flesh, soul, and spirit; on vocation,
election, and the Gnostic accepting both; and on the Jew and the Gentile,
and the Church gathered from each race.

Over and over again Clement asserts that a life
of chaste wedlock is not to be accounted imperfect.

XVIII.

The Commentaria of Le Nourry have been my
guide to the brief analysis of these Elucidations, though I have not
always allowed the learned Benedictine to dictate an opinion, or to
control my sense of our author’s argument.